Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate Now Available — We're excited to make the IE8 Release Candidate available today for public download today in 25 languages for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server customers. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8. Please download it now and try it out.

New Internet Explorer 8 accelerates browsing — Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of the most commonly used web browser in the world, has left beta testing and is now available as “Release Candidate 1.” This isn't the final release version per se, but it's close enough …

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 Fact Sheet — An overview of the features and benefits of Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 8. — Windows Internet Explorer 8 is the next version of the world's most popular browser that optimizes developer and end-user experiences to provide a window to the Web of online services.

Report: Steve Jobs Is In The Office Today — Perhaps it's because I'm stuck in a Munich hotel with the flu, but this most recent round of rumors about Steve Jobs undergoing surgery today is annoying me more than normal. The entire report is based on something someone heard someone else say at a party.

Apple Awarded Multi-Touch Patent — According to the US Patent Office Apple was awarded patent number 7,479,949 on January 20, 2009. The patent which was filed on April 11, 2008 covers multi-touch and all associated gestures such as pinch, swipe and rotation. — The patent is titled:

why open video? — [ Note: Mike Shaver gives the short version of this post. I have done a great job of burying the lead here. There's a post from the Wikimedia Foundation on the topic and a post in the Mozilla Blog as well. ] — Everyone agrees that the open web is becoming more important in our shared human experience.

Barack Obama's Site Leading to Trojan — Change has finally arrived in the United States of America, marking the dawn of a new era. The US Presidential campaign has shown the world how governments can leverage Web 2.0 to better understand and garner support from their citizens.

Just how much is Twitter's burn rate? — Relentless biz-blogger Kara Swisher is pushing again for Facebook to acquire Twitter. Twitter will never IPO on its own, she says, and Facebook is Twitter's most natural fit as a parent company. — But there's an important number missing …

Cheney's Veil Lifted on Vice President's Residence — Hope and change has come to Google Maps. The official residence of the vice president, obscured until Dick Cheney's last days in office and residence, now shines in satellite sunlight. — A reader tipped us off that Google Maps …

More Signs of a Google Webdrive — The long-awaited and much-delayed GDrive is likely to be released in the near future as more pieces of its integration are revealed. Cédric Vergé noticed a change in one of the CSS files for Google Apps: there's a class named “webdrive” and an icon for the new service.

Layoffs at Fox Interactive Media — News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media digital division is laying off about 5% of its work force, or about 100 people, amid continued cost-cutting efforts, according to a person familiar with the situation. — The cuts, which started in the last month …

iLife '09 Shipping January 27 — Major Upgrades to iPhoto, iMovie & GarageBand — Apple® today announced that iLife® '09 will be available tomorrow, January 27, and features major upgrades to iPhoto®, iMovie® and GarageBand®, with breakthrough new ways to organize and manage photos …

New Bill Asks For Cameraphones To Go Clickety Clack — Smile, say cheese and hold that pose till you hear the ‘click’. A new bill introduced in the Congress by New York Republican Rep. Peter King requires mobile phones with digital cameras “to make a sound” when a photograph is taken.

Should Yahoo Buy The New York Times? — Carol Bartz, the new Yahoo (YHOO) CEO, is getting ready for her coming out party tomorrow: she hosts her first earnings call for the company following the release of Q1 results. The numbers are likely to be ugly, but that won't be all that surprising.

Dopplr's moment of long wow — This month Dopplr delightfully surprised me, supplying me with something I didn't know I needed. The result: I'm now a more loyal Dopplr user. It's a great example of a long wow moment. — Dopplr is “an online service for smarter travel.”

Senate OKs unnecessary delay to digital TV switch — Every night for the past couple of months, the weather person on one of my local TV news programs has been counting down the days to the nation's switch to digital television. I can almost say it in my sleep: In February 17 …

IBM Beefs Up Tivoli for the Cloud — Today IBM announced that six universities are using its cloud computing expertise to set up and manage clouds located in Qatar, Africa and in Japan. It is using Hadoop for allocating resources in the cloud — something it first began doing in 2007 …

WebbAlert Stops Filming; Impact For Federated Media? — Morgan Webb's WebbAlert show has stop filming as of today. She noted in her farewell post, “When I started WebbAlert, my TV show X-Play only taped three episodes a week so I had the time to dedicate my video blog.

Firefox Mobile may be on Touch Pro next week — Despite a previous update from the Mozilla team, it now looks like the Firefox Mobile browser, codenamed Fennec, could be ready for a Windows Mobile beta as soon as next week, and they've chosen a phone to do the honors. — From this week's meeting:

Notebooks now make up over 70 percent of Mac sales — Four years ago, sales of desktop machines made up 60 percent of Apple's computer sales, while notebooks made up 40 percent. Not only have those numbers now reversed, they've skyrocketed in the direction of the notebook for Apple.

IBM Slashes 2,800 Jobs — International Business Machines Corp. sent layoff notices to more than 2,800 people in its sales and software groups in the U.S. last week, indicating that domestic job cuts at the technology giant may be more significant than it has signaled.

Apple releases NVIDIA Graphics Update 2009 — Apple on Monday released a software update that addresses issues with its Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter and also boosts HD video performance on some current Mac notebooks and previous-generation Mac desktops.